As Gov. Kathy Hochul prepares for what is likely to be a tough re-election fight next year, she is promoting a state budget deal stuffed with politically popular initiatives aimed at making life in New York more affordable.
She has been less eager to talk about a consequential last-minute addition to the budget that is aimed at winning over a relatively small yet deeply influential group of voters — Hasidic Jews — but may be broadly unpopular with her Democratic base.
The governor is facing a wave of criticism over her efforts to weaken an obscure, century-old law that requires private schools to provide a basic education. Changing the law has been a top priority of the state’s Hasidic leaders, whose endorsements are highly coveted come election season.
The measure is expected to pass the Senate and Assembly in the coming days.
One faction of the Satmar Hasidic community celebrated the bill on social media on Wednesday, writing that the state budget “includes amended legislation securing freedom of education!”
Education experts, including the head of the state education department, have accused Ms. Hochul of seeking political support at the expense of children, as have some legislators and several members of the governor’s own staff.
While the law applies to all nonpublic schools, it will chiefly affect all-boys Hasidic schools, known as yeshivas, which provide mostly religious lessons in Yiddish and Hebrew. The push to adjust the rules for such schools, which collect hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars but sometimes do not provide a basic secular education, was led by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. His conference includes ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic legislators who are profoundly skeptical of any government involvement in their schools and have spent years backing the changes.
Support also came from non-Jewish legislators who represent parts of the lower and middle Hudson Valley, where there is a large Hasidic community.
The governor’s support for the measure may offer some insight into how uneasy Ms. Hochul is about 2026, when both she and congressional Democrats in the Hudson Valley will be fighting to stay in office.
Any opportunity to court the Hasidic community, which tends to vote as a bloc, would boost Democrats’ prospects against their Republican counterparts, who have capitalized on that community’s growing conservatism and support for President Trump.
The legislation would delay consequences for private schools that are not providing a basic education, and make it significantly easier for schools to demonstrate that they are complying with the law.
Under the new language, private schools that need to be accredited in order to show compliance would have an easier time hiring their preferred accreditation agencies, and the changes could open the door for Hasidic communities to create their own agencies.
Schools can show they are following the law by offering some form of exam at the end of the year, including but not limited to the annual standardized tests that the state offers to public school students.
Critics were quick to pounce.
Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, described the measure as a “secretive backroom deal.”
“When people wonder why so many Americans have so little faith that those in elected office make decisions for the right reasons, I would point to this as a perfect example,” she added.
Last week, as the agreement was being finalized, the state education commissioner, Betty Rosa, called the changes a “travesty” for children.
“This is not policymaking,” her spokesman, JP O’Hare, said earlier this week. “This is interference.”
Adina Mermelstein Konikoff, the director of Yaffed, a group supporting secular education in yeshivas, called the move “a direct assault on the futures of tens of thousands of Hasidic children.”
Mr. Heastie characterized the measure as an effort to give religious schools various options for complying with state law. “It’s not a loosening,” he said. “We used a lot of the regulations that the state Board of Regents put in. It’s just allowing yeshivas and schools to get themselves in compliance.”
He has supported changing the law despite the confusion and, in some cases, entrenched opposition of legislators who felt the changes were being made hastily and would undermine the state’s efforts to raise education standards.
Assemblyman Micah Lasher, a Manhattan Democrat, said he was “deeply uncomfortable with what is happening here.”
“At best we are being asked to sign off on a major policy shift at the 11th hour without any real public discussion,” he said. “That happens more often than it should in Albany, but here, the future of thousands of children is at stake.”
The governor also faced internal rebellion from members of her senior staff, according to several people in the governor’s office who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to publicly criticize Ms. Hochul.
The governor defended the change during an appearance in Albany on Tuesday morning.
“This is something that was important to members of the legislature,” she said. “They brought it to our attention.”
She rejected the notion that the changes would lower educational standards. “We’re not changing what substantial equivalency is asking for,” she said, referring to the name of the law. “We’re just simply saying there’s other ways to do it.”
A group representing some Hasidic yeshivas did not reply to a request for comment.
Rabbi Moishe Indig, a leader of one faction of the Satmar Hasidic group, said he had supported Ms. Hochul’s re-election in 2022 because “she promised that she would support our religion and our community.”
“So we expect her to do what she said when she was running,” he said.
Ms. Hochul has staked her reputation on helping Democratics win, and keep, congressional seats across the state. New York’s Hasidic community is spread across Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley, a region that includes two highly competitive congressional districts.
Representative Pat Ryan of the Hudson Valley, who has close ties to the ultra-Orthodox community in his district and faces perhaps the tightest race in the state, was among those pushing behind the scenes. A spokesman for Mr. Ryan declined to comment.
Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican who holds another of those Hudson Valley seats, has been openly musing about a run against Ms. Hochul.
His path to victory — and the path for several other Republican contenders — relies in part on running up the score among Hasidic voters. Mr. Lawler’s district includes a large Hasidic community, and he is strongly allied with Hasidic leaders.
Assemblyman Chris Eachus, a Democrat who represents parts of Rockland and Orange Counties, also backed the changes. “I probably have more yeshivas in my district than any other type of private school,” he said.
“Schools as a whole were worried that whatever we came up with was going to cause mass closures of schools,” he said. “We are still going to be able to get rid of that handful across New York State of really poor educational institutions, and all the other private institutions will be just fine.”
But supporters of expanding secular studies in yeshivas said the revised law would make it harder to impose consequences on schools that do not provide an adequate education.
After complaints surfaced from yeshiva graduates who said their educations had left them unprepared to navigate the world and find jobs, the state education department spent nearly a decade trying to come up with ways to measure the schools, and to penalize yeshivas that were not following the law.
In some cases, Hasidic leaders said publicly that they would never offer a robust secular curriculum.
A 2022 New York Times investigation found that at one large Hasidic yeshiva that offered a state test, every single student failed.
Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.
Benjamin Oreskes is a reporter covering New York State politics and government for The Times.
Eliza Shapiro reports on New York City for The Times.
Grace Ashford covers New York government and politics for The Times.
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